"Alberta-Jones" (November 12,1930-August 5,1965)

Was born to Sarah (Sadie)  Frances Crawford  & Odell Jones,in Louisville,Kentucky.Alberta attended Louisville Central High School and the Louisville Municipal College for Negroes,which in 1951 merged with the University of Louisville.She graduated third in her class.

In 1956 she became the first African American to  attend the University of Louisville Law School,Alberta transferred to Howard University School of Law in her second year.She graduated fourth in her class from Howard in 1958 and the next year she became one of the first African American women to pass the Kentucky Bar.In 1959 she returned to Kentucky and opened a law office in downtown Louisville.

Alberta was the first attorney for the rising boxer Cassius Clay ( later Muhammad Ali),negotiating his first professional fight contract in 1960.
She was a member of the Fall City Bar Association,the Louisville Bar Association,and the American Bar Association.Alberta was also a member of Eta Zeta Chapter of  Zeta Phi Beta Sorority.She participated in 1963 civil rights marches in Louisville and in the March on Washington on August 28 of that year.

In her hometown,in 1960 became an advocate for increased African American political participation.She created the Independent Voter's Association which 
registered 6,000 African Americans. She rented voting machines and held classes in her office on "how to vote four your candidate." Her efforts resulted in a major political shakeup in 1961 when African-American voters helped oust the mayor and many of the city's aldermen.Two years later the new city administration enacted the first public accommodations ordinance in the South.

Because of her now-considerable political influence,Alberta in 1964 was appointed city attorney in Louisville,becoming the first woman of any race to hold that position.In February 1965 she was appointed prosecutor for the 
Domestic Relations Court again a first for a woman or a person of color.
Ironically,she was responsible for prosecuting mostly white men for spousal 
abuse.

On August 5,1965, her body was found tossed off Louisville's Sherman Minton Bridge into the Ohio River.She was either 34 or 35 at the time of her death.An autopsy revealed that Alberta had received several blows to her head before being tossed unconscious into the water,where she drowned.Her rented car was found several blocks from the bridge with traces of blood in it,and her purse was found from the bridge three years later.


Witness later recalled seeing a body being tossed in the river by three undentified men at the bridge.The night before her death,Alberta's mama recalled her daughter receiving a phone from a friend named Gladys Whyckoff who wanted Alberta to meet her to discuss a lawsuit against 
a beautician.Alberta left for the meeting she never returned home.

The FBI matched a fingerprint found inside Alberta car to a man who was 17-years-old at the time,prosecutors decided two years later not to pursue the case,citing deaths of key witnesses who later turned to be alive.

In 2017,the Jones case reopened,funded by the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act,which provided $13 million dollars annually to the Department of Justice,the FBI,and U.S. State and local law officials to investigate and prosecute pre-1970 murders.Nonetheless,the murder of 
Alberta Jones remain unsolved.